Bilbao Rd6: Carlsen avenges loss and beats Caruana

10/8/2012 – After suffering the unthinkable in round one, when he started with a harrowing loss to Fabiano Caruana, Magnus Carlsen could well be expected to charge after revenge in their return game. And that is exactly what he did. It was vintage Carlsen as he reached a slightly better endgame, and proceeded to transform lead into gold as only he seems able to. Full report.

São Paulo / Bilbao Grand Slam Final

Round six report

Round 6: Monday, October 8, 17h

Francisco Vallejo

½-½

Viswanathan Anand

Magnus Carlsen

1-0

Fabiano Caruana

Sergey Karjakin

½-½

Levon Aronian

Replay all games of the round

Taking revenge of their previous clash in Sao Paulo, in which Carlesen had
the play but ended up losing by a fatal error, Magnus Carlsen, the world No.
1, won his return game against the provisional leader, Fabiano Caruana, tightening
the classification in the first day of the second round of the Masters Final,
which is being played in Bilbao.

In the stellar encounter of the day, vital for the development of the tournament,
Carlsen, who started with the initial advantage of playing white, defeated
Caruana after an extensive game, which lasted over four hours. The Norwegian
and the world No. 1 countered the French Defense of his Italian opponent to
prepare his pieces for an “Indian attack”. As a result, Carlsen
entered the middle game with a slight advantage, which after a simplification
of some pieces, ended up in a difficult bus equal ending.

Nevertheless, the serious inaccuracies committed by the revelation of the
tournament and provisional leader, Caruana, enabled the Norwegian to win,
even though logic dictated that he should not get the three points at stake.

In the game played by the Olympic champion Levon Aronian and the Russian Sergey
Karjakin, the Armenian used one of his favorite weapons, the Marshall Attack.
The variation had been designed together with his coach Sarguisian more than
three years ago, but had never been used before, as Aronian has stated. Karjakin,
faced by this ploy, refused to surrender the bishop and looked for quiet play.
By avoiding the trap, Kariakin has achieved a fast continuation until the draw.

For the sixth consecutive game, the world champion Anand ended his game in
a tie, in this case, versus the Spanish champion, Francisco Vallejo. The Indian
played the Arckhangelsk, which is very uncommon for him. As far as the Basque
master José Luis Fernandez is concerned, “Anand prepared this
variation in order to defend himself against Caruana, who uses it regularly,
and not finding the correct defense, decided to start using it himself.”
Vallejo has found a slight material advantage of a pawn, but the position
was controlled by both players during the whole game, constantly remaining
in the equity field. The world champion has found the correct defense and
without hard effort, achieved the draw.

The state of elite preparation

What would you do if you knew for a certainty that the best you could hope
for with all the opening preparation in the world, was a minimal advantage,
and the most likely case was no advantage at all? That is very much the quandary
of the absolute elite nowadays, a problem that lesser mortals such as those
merely rated 2700 do not face quite yet. Back in the day of Garry Kasparov,
or more specifically, when he was the domineering force classified as being
years ahead in the opening, the level of preparation was very unequal, depending
on the player himself and the quality (and number) of seconds to feed him his
secret moves. While the words “depending on the player himself”
might sound like equal footing, it meant that if you were 100 Elo stronger than
the others, you had that much of an edge in analysis as well.

Fast forward to 2012 and the situation is completely different. Everyone has
a team of tireless seconds, and they are the same seconds for everyone: Houdini,
Rybka, Stockfish, Critter, Fritz, etc. These seconds are already considerably
stronger than the highest rated human, and readily available to all. When Anand
chose an opening in the world championship, he did not even need to unleash
any great novelty for the opposing team to be all over it, knowing the world
champion felt there was something, and analyze it to death. By the next day,
with ten computers running all day and night, any potential danger had been
effectively neutralized. No one is “years ahead of the rest” in
opening preparation. In fact, no one is even months. This is especially true
of the absolute elite who tirelessly work to patch up any broken links in their
armor.

What is one to do? The solution varies somewhat from player to player. Some
will deliberately take extra risks, knowing the road they are walking down is
unsafe, much to the delight of the spectators, but less so to the loss of the
player’s equanimity. When it scores points, the player is readily described
in reports as “brave”, and “fearless”,
but when it loses, they are labeled as “foolhardy” or “unwise”.
Magnus Carlsen seems to have his own solution for the moment: since no edge
is expected, do not bother chasing one. Leave ultra-analyzed theory as soon
as possible, without going so far as to be actually worse, and play chess. It
is the reason for openings such as the Philidor, and in today’s game an
offbeat French (if one can call it that) starting 1.e4 e6 2.d3.

The result was a complete reversal of the first half, with a win for Carlsen
over Caruana, placing him within a half point of the Italian in traditional
scoring, though two points behind using the Bilbao scoring method.

Albert Silver

Traditional crosstable after six rounds

Bilbao crosstable after six rounds

Player portraits

Magnus Carlsen – young, cool and Number One

At 21, Magnus Carlsen has had a career that equals or even surpasses the brilliance
of that of Bobby Fischer or Garry Kasparov at the same age. He has been number
one on 19 of the 22 lists published between January 2010 and August 2012. He
also won the Masters Final last year, after an electrifying
tie-break against Vassily Ivanchuk. He is a genius and by all indications
has not yet reached his peak.

The Oxford Dictionary defines "genius" as "exceptional intellectual
or creative power or other natural ability". It is enough just to enjoy
Carlsen’s (or Anand’s) matches to see that he lives up to this definition,
although he himself gave another definition on January 17, 2008 on the death
of the charismatic American, Bobby Fischer, the 1972 World Champion. "What
I admired most about him was his ability to make what was in fact so difficult
look easy to us. I try to emulate him," said Carlsen.

But there is also no doubt that Carlsen is an overall genius, not just in chess,
although he does not want to know his Intelligence Quotient. Just to mention
one example, at age five he memorized the capitals, areas and population sizes
of almost all the countries in the world, and similar information for all the
towns in Norway.

First and foremost, geniuses are a privilege to their parents, but can also
be nightmares if they get bored easily in class and do not adapt to a world
organized for people with much smaller mental capacities than theirs. Magnus’
parents made the right decision by taking him and his sisters on a one-year
trip around the world when he was thirteen. If it is said travel is always an
excellent school of life, it was even more so in a case like his. By then he
was already the youngest grandmaster (a title similar to that of a doctor of
philosophy) in the world, leading him to attend the 2004 World Chess Olympiad
with his national team in Calvía, Mallorca, where the ushers refused
to allow him on stage because they could not believe that someone who was just
a child could be Norway’s best player.

Geniuses tend to flee crowds and be very shy. Four years ago, Magnus hardly
spoke to anyone that did not belong to his most intimate circle. Now, after
covering great distances, playing hundreds of matches all over the world and
being interviewed by, albeit reluctantly, numerous journalists, the precocious
number one has learned that being interviewed forms part of his duties, although
he does it sparingly, and he has even been a spokesmodel for the clothing brand
Junior G-Star.

Despite the fact that the stereotypes may make one think the opposite, most
elite chess players are quite sociable. Carlsen is one of the few exceptions,
despite already being a national icon, and he flees when he can from being exposed
to people who are not part of his closest circle. Games with other chess players
where he does not leave the hotel are usually the only way to see him outside
of his room or the tournament hall. He lives in his own world, based heavily
on the internet. He appears to be reasonably happy, perhaps because he knows
that millions of fans have a great appreciation for the beauty and depth of
his matches. Although he speaks perfect English, his native language is chess,
and into it he has poured his amazing intelligence, which he really couldn’t
care less about, just like Anand.

See also

10/14/2012 – It wasn't for lack of playing in the final round, at least not for Magnus Carlsen. He may have played simply out of principle, but he was also playing for a place in history if he beat Aronian. No records fell, but he made no mistakes in his blitz tiebreak against the co-leader Fabiano Caruana, and took it 2-0 for yet another feather in his cap. Illustrated report with GM commentary.Discuss

10/12/2012 – It was long in the coming, and one knew that it was a matter of time before the new guard started scoring against the old. Today was the day as Magnus Carlsen finally broke the tie-streak and beat Vishy Anand after a hard tense battle. Caruana stays in the running as he beat Aronian after the Armenian made a speculative sacrifice that failed. Full report with analysis.Discuss

Discuss

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3/4/2015 – Ideas and strategies in Grandmaster games can be quite instructive. IM Merijn van Delft presents games like
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